The Winning Shot

This is the second of several blogs inspired by NCAA basketball’s “March Madness” championship tournament. I don’t know the person’s name or even the team that he or she plays for, but I am certain that someone will achieve great notoriety this week. They will do so by making an incredible shot at the buzzer to win the game for their team. It will be the kind of finish that makes the highlight reels for the rest of the tournament, possibly even for years to come. I love watching March Madness, especially the close games that are sometimes decided by this kind of winning shot. But I also think that the lore of the winning shot creates one of the challenges that every leader must face. The winning shot gives the appearance that the entire game is decided in that one moment. It downplays the many good (or bad) performances in the previous 39 minutes of the game. What about the person who made a great defensive play? Or the person who came off the bench in the middle of the half and gave the team a much needed spark? The focus on the winning shot certainly doesn’t give credit to the many (boring) hours of practice or the conditioning work before the season even began. And yet, without all these other factors, the hero would never have had a chance to make the winning shot. Far too often, leaders overemphasize the equivalent of the winning shot. They search for the one golden opportunity or huge initiative that will turn their church around or revolutionize their ministry. As justification for this philosophy, these leaders may look at another successful organization, pointing to something that appears to be a breakthrough decision. In reality, those breakthroughs are usually the culmination of months or years of hard, consistent work. Jim Collins says that businesses often make the same mistake. In Great by Choice, he explains that “a big, successful venture can look in retrospect like a single-step creative breakthrough when, in fact, it came about as a multistep iterative process.” Just as in basketball, that winning shot is made possible by the hours of less glamorous work that preceded it. How would you describe your leadership approach? Are you simply hoping for the winning shot? Or are you doing the hard work that will ultimately make a breakthrough possible? It’s easy to receive my blogs by email. Just sign-up on Feedburner by clicking here.]]>